Emily Brontë

About Emily Brontë

Emily Bronte, born in 1818, was the fifth of six children of parents Patrick and Maria Branwell Bronte. Patrick Bronte was perpetual curate in the village of Haworth in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. The sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne were talented authors of novels that have become classics, as well as prolific poets.

Their lives were dogged by tragedy. Their mother, Maria Bronte, died in 1821 when Emily was three. Two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died in childhood, the remaining sisters and their brother Branwell died as young adults. Only Charlotte married but died in her early thirties from pregnancy complications. Their father, having lost his entire family, then returned to his first home in Ireland. There are conflicting accounts of the nature of Patrick Bronte’s parenting. The novelist and Charlotte’s friend and contemporary, Elizabeth Gaskell, paints a grim picture of a strict upbringing; other biographies describe a firm but kind father who was extremely proud of his gifted daughters.

The Bronte sisters were educated at home by their father and there was little in the way of formal teaching, but they read prolifically and were free to exercise their fertile childhood imaginations, inventing an entire fictional land called ‘Gondal’ complete with a cast of vivid characters. They clearly had considerable time and freedom to invent their imaginary world.

The sisters spent most of the lives at home in the Parsonage at Haworth, venturing out for limited periods to teach in schools or as governesses. They suffered homesickness and were drawn back to Yorkshire, hoping to open a school. Because of the remoteness of the village the school failed to attract sufficient pupils.

Emily was the shyest and perhaps oddest of the three sisters. She took little care of her appearance, spent hours wandering the Moors around their home, and preferred to be the stay-at-home daughter caring for her father rather than venture out to earn a living as a teacher. Her attempts to leave home failed; she suffered painful homesickness. She had no friends, was never courted by a man as far as is known and was solitary. She wrote one unique, extraordinary novel, Wuthering Heights, a work of violence and sexual passion that defies classification. Introverted and passionate, we can only assume that her accurate perceptions and understanding of human nature were derived from observation.

Emily died at the age of 30. Her work — poems and her one novel — is powerful and moving, the product of a unique personality, out of step with the Victorian age and its expectations of women.